


Waves

by Nat20



Category: Dungeons & Dragons (Roleplaying Game)
Genre: Character Study, Depression, I feel what my characters do, Loneliness, Muses, Original Characters - Freeform, Sebastian belongs to me, Self-Loathing, Trust Issues, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Yasha and Marsh belong to lovely people and amazing players, a character to study to help ease his distressed muse, aaaah, boy really just needs to talk about his feelings with someone, he takes a true statement the wrong way, lack of communication on sebastian's part, mentions of drinking as a coping mechanism, mentions of sex and drinking, mentions of sex as a coping mechanism, mostly a look into Sebastian, refusal to talk about feelings, so I can relax, so often character studies help to calm them down and relax, thus the M rating
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-14
Updated: 2019-08-14
Packaged: 2020-08-23 09:11:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,013
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20240386
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nat20/pseuds/Nat20
Summary: After a fight with a kraken, Sebastian feels something inside of him snap at the truth being spoken, and although he knows it's true, he doesn't react well. A look into what led up to that moment and what Sebastian has been feeling recently.





	Waves

**Author's Note:**

> So it turns out my boy has depression which isn't really a surprise, but I didn't realize he had a lot of self-loathing and trust issues. Man, character studies are great. Anyway, Yasha and Marsh belong to wonderful, beautiful people and I love the characters and the players very much <3
> 
> I just wish Sebastian hadn't been such an ass hat in the last few campaigns, but alas, the boy got issues. Trying to help his muse through them with a character study so he can Chill and not be a dickweed.
> 
> Anyway, I hope you enjoy.

It came in waves. But from where, he didn't quite know. It was like a rising and falling tide but it had no rhythmic clock. No set time for arrival. It would appear without warning as a sudden upheaval of agitation and annoyance. A clever mask for something he could never quite place. Loneliness? Frustration? Fear? Sadness? He would have to sit down and think about it for hours, sometimes days, to discover the source. He had to work through his thoughts and pick them apart, asking himself why over and over again until his own soul told him the answer. He couldn't always do such a feat alone. Often, he needed a trusting ear to vent to. Someone that understood that whatever he said was just part of the process. It was not something being put out there to be judged and ripped apart by critics. It was simply his thoughts being cruel to him. Someone that could see what he was trying to do and appreciate the effort and trust he had handed them. Being so fragile and open and sensitive. Letting down all his walls to openly cry while he babbled on and on about something, trying to dig out the source of his pain and rip it out of him like a weed in a flower bed.

There was one, little problem at the moment, however.

He had no one to vent to.

There were people around. There always were. Plenty of souls he could spill his worries to but he couldn't do it. He suspected the reaction. Disgust. Anger. Frustration. Annoyance. The thought of having that response to exposing himself so fully filled him with a new type of fear and a new type of deep frustration. He had no one he could shut off his mind to and just ramble for hours about what was ailing him. Instead, Sebastian was forced to lock the agitation away under a strained, fake smile. Pretending as if everything was fine even though he felt like he was dying on the inside. That fake smile was beginning to crack at the edges and he was losing whatever control he had over the growing wave.

He did as his father had always told him: before one goes to perform on a stage, they must push down their suffering as to not alert the audience. You must keep smiling, no matter how bad it hurts.

Yet that smile was getting harder and harder to summon.

Sebastian had tried to handle the stress and growing tension on his own in the only ways he knew how. He had slept with a lot of people at the Scarlet House, yet that only helped the physical stress, leaving him feeling boneless. His mind would be even louder after, making him feel deep guilt in his stomach that coiled and turned and made it hard to eat and drink and breathe. He had even tried getting drunk, but he had a dog and an egg to look after. He couldn't be so irresponsible.

His veneer was starting to peel, exposing the inferior base that could hardly hold itself together under stress. A mule that had far too much piled onto it's back, knees shaking and ready to fold into itself from the weight it didn't ask for but had to carry.

When he felt like this, Sebastian would often go find his sister and ask if she could listen to him. If she had the energy to deal with him. Sometimes she didn't, so Sebastian would do something else until she did. But the moment she was ready to listen, he would pour out his heart. He would slowly start to put himself back together through hot tears and bubbling, broken sobs. Sometimes what bothered him would be so simple and ridiculous that after his outburst he would feel ashamed and stupid. Yet Samantha never judged him like that. She understood how he felt and knew how stressful things could be, even the small things that finally broke someone. It was the equivalent of someone snapping over the last cookie being eaten or the music being too loud or the clink of a glass. The final annoyance that broke their resolve and caused them to melt. Samantha had those moments too, and each time she needed him, Sebastian was there. They had a system.

Now, however, he was melting. He had enough. Something inside of him snapped and it kept breaking into tinier pieces the more time wore on. It was stupid. He knew it was. But there was just so much shit going on he couldn't handle it, but he couldn't just quit. First, he had a job to do. Second, he couldn't abandon Yasha and Marsh to whatever cruel fate the damned gods had planned for them. He wasn't going to let them die because he decided he was going to get up and leave. He had abandoned someone before and he regretted it every day. He had his reasons. He couldn't be mad at himself for doing what he did, but he still kicked himself for reacting on a knee-jerk reaction.

Apparently that's all he could do.

Marsh was right, of course she was. But when everything seemed to want to fucking kill you what was Sebastian supposed to do? Stand there and try to have a cup of tea with something trying to suck out his brain? Take constant insults and abuse from fucking strangers just because they know something about the world that he doesn't? He was getting fed up with all the cryptic answers they got to questions. “Are you sure you want to do that?” and the most infamous “is that a good idea?”. There were no solid answers. No one told them anything. They had information they wanted to hide and it was wearing him down. They do what they think is right only to get yelled at. They try to fix something only to be told they made it worse. But no one seemed to want to help, to offer some of their damn advice or knowledge. It was a shot in the dark. Warnings left and right, but what choices did they have other than move forward, stay still, or walk back?

He knew he reacted too quickly to a lot of things, but the only other option he could think of was to not react at all. He was a persuasive and charismatic man. He was a fucking bard for crying out loud. But every time he opened his mouth he felt as if whatever he said fell on statues. Unable to hear, unwilling to listen, and incapable of moving. He had given up trying to talk his way out of situations when no one wanted to hear him out. That final straw came when Diamond Eyes decided the only option was to either keep Harold's mother's heart locked in a fish tank or to die. Sebastian had _tried_ to not kill him. He was vocal about that. But it was the only solution that seemed to make itself known. Kill the god. It's the only way. Diamond Eyes wouldn't listen to reason. Refused to listen to reason. So, Sebastian took the last option.

But at the words that were spoken after a fight under water with a kraken, trying to do something that they were warned about doing, being mocked by a god that caused all this mess and more, the wave inside him had finally crested over whatever he had built up to hold it back and he felt the burning hot emotion grip his chest and his heart and fill his throat with molten silence and covering his brain with a blinding static he couldn't think through.

_Fuck up. Useless. Worthless._

The static repeated the same thing, making his jaw clench so tight his head hurt. He couldn't blame Marsh. They were all tired and all stressed and all in the same situation with each other. But he couldn't understand his own thoughts.

_Fuck up. Useless. Worthless._

He wanted to run away. To throw up his hands and quit. To either drown at sea trying to swim back to shore or giving up on life entirely and go in the opposite direction of the forsaken city they came from. But he couldn't do either of those things. He made a promise. And Sebastian tried to keep his promises.

There was one promise that he broke that shattered his heart after he left his family. As broken as his family was, they were still his. They were still a form of support. But he had left. He ran away because he couldn't take it anymore. He regretted that night more than anything else and he was not going to repeat it, no matter how much his heart hurt. He would rather be hated and despised and killed by those around him than abandon them to some awful fate.

Besides, he couldn't blame anyone that was suffering just like him. Not when there were people out there starving to death in the city for the shit they caused after killing Diamond Eyes.

The funny thing was, even though he knew Marsh and Yasha were right, he couldn't bring himself to admit it or to apologize for his actions. He had a reason for acting the way he did. But he wasn't going to bother explaining it.

There was no one he could pour his heart and soul out to anymore. No one he trusted enough to show his true self and be vulnerable around. If he opened himself up, he would just get stabbed with judgment and ridicule and advice he didn't want or need. Advice. That always made it worse. Well-meaning words that turned to ice the moment it reached his ears. He _knew_ what he had to do. But hearing it from someone else when he tried to open himself up made him want to scream.

Sebastian felt alone.

But he was used to that by now. This was how things were. So, he lied. And he kept telling himself the greatest lie ever told until it escaped his lips into the outside world, spoken through gritted teeth and anger and rage and sorrow and pain and fear and loneliness in a false attempt to trick himself into believing something that everyone could tell was a lie, but a lie that no one could refute without opening a rotting can of worms.

_Everything is fine. I'm fine._

Every inquiry of “are you alright?” or “what's wrong?” makes his throat burn in tears he won't let rise. He won't open himself up to the vultures of judgment to pick apart his heart until there's nothing left. He's too tired to try and explain why he doesn't trust someone. Better to spare their feelings and their time. Esepcially when he knew they would all eventually see the awful person he was an abandon him. Sebastian was therefore content poisoning himself slowly from the inside, letting bitterness burn and toil under that growing wave that would come back. He knew what the underlying problem was, somehow. He didn't need to pour out his heart to know, but it was still roosting there deep under his skin and making his teeth itch and his bone ache.

He was tired.

He was useless.

He was too erratic.

He was pathetic.

He was lonely.

Sebastian prayed the brain static that would make him numb would come quickly, so he wouldn't have to feel like this anymore. He wanted his own mind to give up on the pain and to abort it. He just had to ignore it long enough and try to get it under control. Try to tape together whatever had finally snapped in him and keep it together long enough to fix what he broke.

The mirror, the economy, everything.

Until then, until the static finally came to his buzzing and frantic mind, he would continue to speak in lies.

_Everything is fine. I'm fine._

_ I'm fine._


End file.
